"Well, then.  Better early than late; if you would be so kind?"

It's a strange and tenuous balance to have Ophelia and Luna operating simultaneously, but they appear to be managing, judging by the color of Luna's pocket-stripe and goggles.

"Right this way, just down the hall really. At some point I should get a clear explanation of what the colors indicate for you, I can guess and tailor my attitude based on that, but why guess when I can just ask, hm?"

"Perhaps it is intended to remain a mystery, for now."

"More realistically, you in particular should know, for Spirit Association liaison reasons, but, the entity hopefully soon to be legally recognized as Annabel Asterisk Lee already has enough interest groups that will pick a fight with her for healthily and happily existing, and has no desire to add a third such burden to her plate when she's just starting out.  So it's not something to just wander the halls discussing."

Luna follows up, and murmurs "We'll talk about all that later, okay?  Just...not now.  Opsec."

"I take your meaning even if we are in the middle of the DC office. Just because we didn't have to walk through a checkpoint doesn't mean there's no security. There's... The Association is not above the law, and free speech is a thing." Sigh. "Here, Spiritwatcher Maeve's office."

They've gone into a back hallway with a fancy break room, built like academic offices. Maeve's, apparently, is an oak door that sticks out somewhat.

Riley reaches for the intercom button, but it buzzes on before she manages to touch it.

"Yes, yes, Luna may enter to come speak of Culpeper Cut. Thank you, miss Riley."

"You're welcome. Luna, I need to head out but I'll have someone to show you to the exit when you're done here. Here's my contact info, and that of the department." She proffers a business card.

"The more people who know a secret, the greater the chance it could reach unfriendly ears, even if all who you have told would never dare hurt you," is her response to the comment about DC's security.

"You have been very helpful, Riley; thank you very much."  Once that's said, she pockets the card.

(And, of course, enters the office.)

Spiritwatcher Maeve's office is cool and dim, heavy drapes all around the walls providing hints of light filtering down. Glowy runes are placed along the base of the wall, and crossing the threshold feels like - becoming a guest, for lack of a better word. Her desk looks like rough, old, scarred dark wood, and has a giant crystal ball resting on it, white mist swirling within. There's a nice chair sitting in front of it, right in front of where Maeve rests her chin on intertwined hands.

Maeve herself has braided red hair, bright green eyes that don't quite seem to be glowing outright but are definitely far more shiny than they should be, a tiara and complicated necklace and multi-layered shawl sort of raiment, dominated by the colors of green and white. She has a blue patterned tattoo around her neck.

"Be welcome, fellow speaker to spirits. The wilds of nature do not bow nor conquer, and our efforts to make accord ever have limits. The attention and will of the blessed is not without limit, and the insight of ordinary man has at times proven blinkered and self-serving, and so treating with them remains a challenge and a peril. You say you were given the spark by one who vexes and frustrates us, in jest?"

"Ma'am, to be pointlessly cryptic and arcane is to confound your own attempts to understand.  And it is your calling to understand, is it not?

"So.  On that note.  Culpeper Cut, the spirit, gives most of its fucks about the ways plants are cool, which, frankly, should have been deduced the moment someone talked to it for more than five seconds.  But I'm given to understand that no-one has, and certainly not in any way it understood.

"That 'seeking an accord' was your undoing.  You must first seek to understand values, before you can commission trade.  And here, that failed, and may well have never happened, despite even a clear human analogue to draw from in attempts at understanding!"

She hisses out a breath, taking action to calm burning indignancy, lest it overflow before it's due.

"I don't know how, and do pardon my language, the absolute blithering fuck y'all missed that Culpeper Cut is effectively an autistic prankster with a special interest in plants, but you need to do better.  You have most certainly spoken to the spirits, but how often have you listened?

"And I'm not blessed with jack and shit; I just have power, perhaps asked-for - but fundamentally unearned.  You just have power.  And with that power comes a responsibility to those that granted it, whether they care or not.  With that power we place ourselves above the common man, and the lofty heights of power do so make one lose track of the little things, do they not?  Why, I may never want for money again," she lilts, and then growls "- and isn't that something most would kill for."  Her expression, sickeningly syrupy-sweet and just as insincere, smiles for but a moment - or perhaps it shows her teeth.

Her hands thump down upon Maeve's desk, arms spread, leaning in, framing the crystal ball, practically looming.

(Her raiment has shifted to Diana's, as well, her spear upon her back, vibrant red-orange clashing with Maeve's blue-green-white.)

"I had worried, coming in; I'd thought some of the girls would be vastly out of touch with the world around them.  I'm not happy to be proven right, and by a person in such a critical position!

"If this is what the Spirit Association considers meet to the duty it carries in its very name, this cryptic self-blinding and overblown gravitas interfering with the very diplomacy that is core to our kind and our work, I must challenge you to reflect upon this pointless pomp and circumlocuitous crap, and find something better to do."

Her voice softens.

"Because you can, if you dare but try."

"I didn't even have powers until after I fixed most of the problems I resolved today.  You don't need to be blessed to do this work - you just need to be canny, and kind.  Certainly, the magic helps, and I'd no more risk a mortal life upon an unknown spirit than I'd charge the Evertree, untransformed, without a single spear in my possession or a plan - but.  But.  I did this still.  Now it's your turn.  Prove that all that spirit-watching's taught you something worth knowing, because when I came here today, I had a diplomatic purpose - and this conversation is the first thing that has truly made me doubt whether it's to the Association that I should pledge my banner."

"And regardless of anything else that may happen, I would advise taking more inspiration from how ambassadors style their offices, because you are one."

Maeve takes this all in perfectly coolly, never seeming startled or upset at all.

"How passionate of you to appear and conclude, immediately, that we have not thought of these things before, that we stand in ivory towers or palaces of indolence, that you have seen past the mistakes of tens of thousands who came before you if only we would listen. Perhaps you are correct. That does happen occasionally. However, I believe you are missing several key pieces of context, most centrally being that my role is an archival and informational one rather than a direct negotiator, followed shortly thereafter in that we bear the weight of three centuries of bureaucracy and precedent. There are things that it is acceptable for us to do. And things that it is not."

She sighs slightly and sits up.

"You want me to cut the crap? Okay, Culpeper Cut did not used to be that way. Culpeper Cut has killed nine people that we know of, including one novice Spirit Bearer. We didn't kill it because the threshold for when it's a good idea to do that is very high. We had barriers put up and patrols around it decades ago; We don't any more since it calmed the fuck down and money and bearer-power spent elsewhere can literally save lives. The directors, the old hats, think in a calculus of death. There are reasons. Sometimes it's corruption. Sometimes it's experience. Sometimes it's a stupid mistake. Sometimes it's wanting to cooperate with federal, state, and local law instead of becoming magical tyrants. Sometimes it's the best we can do. We don't trust that Culpeper Cut won't start sending mutant hyenas after people again if we poke it, so we leave it alone. You went and poked it so now we have to figure it out again. You're correct that spirit bearers have great power for better or worse. At the association we try not to become Magic Napoleon. We, that is spirit bearers, have developed parallel social and cultural systems to the majority of humanity's, we have reasons for things, and you don't know these because you are a child."

"Thank you.  Sincerely."

She sighs, her raiment shifting back, and collapses into the chair.  "Having heard that, I do retract most of my concerns about Culpeper Cut's handling, and generally believe you did reasonably well with the information you had."

A moment passes, Annabel holding up a finger, pinching the bridge of her nose, and taking deep breaths.  Clearly, delivering that monologue took effort.

"I think that if that's all the information you had available to you, you handled Culpeper Cut as well as I expect anyone could have.  This doesn't preclude the...bemusement I experience at this information, however, because while I agree that Culpeper Cut doesn't hold human life in especial regard at present - and separately has been having many problems even predicting them, as it was attempting to do so on a cell-by-cell basis - I don't particularly see why it would just up and take life without need or provocation - because it was quite forthright in communicating its desires, with me."

"I should have...somewhere in here..."

She does have a copy of her notes of her conversation with Culpeper Cut!  They're somewhat intermingled with PLANT FACTS.

"This is what I wrote down both during the talk I had with Culpeper Cut, and what I summated in the car, after; it's as close as I can get to just shoving my memories of it at you, and probably slightly more reliable regardless.  I will ask you to keep certain things that you might infer from what's in these notes private, however; there are some things that oughtn't be shared, for everyone involved's well-being."  Because the fact that Culpeper Cut didn't actually empower her isn't left out, in this copy.

She's extending some trust, to see what Maeve will do with it.

(She's not handing them over without that agreement first, though.)

"I don't disagree, I think, that Culpeper Cut is mercurial.  Its moods can change as fast as the prairie breeze.  But its desires are straightforward, and so, I think, is the spirit in general.  It likes plants, would probably prefer to understand why all these humans rattle on about boring things that aren't plants, and does enjoy pranking us to see what happens.  It's dangerous, sure.  I felt that danger.  But so's a farmer with a gun, and they get the benefit of anti-trespassing laws."

"I'm sure we at the Association are pleased to have your approval," Maeve says with her eyes closed and a hint of something that could be sarcasm or just tiredness.

She shakes her head slightly and looks at Annabel again. "If you would like to see the old case notes that can surely be arranged. It would be a good idea for you to be familiar with them. Notice also that, having not joined the Association, we will not particularly order or forbid an action with regard to the Cut. There are of course still consequences but we have no orders. It is in fact illegal to trespass on Culpeper Cut. I also appreciate the offer of your notes. Would an Oath of the first level, that being one of my own abilities to create binding promises that the parties become aware instantly if broken, hypothetically be satisfactory for your security concerns? The first level if broken simply lets the other party know and gives the breaking party a momentary spike of pain and horror."

"My approval hardly ought to matter, I should think.

"I believe the oath would suffice.  I would have that oath that you shall not reveal, by deed or implication, who did or did not empower me, unless it is first disclosed to the public by myself or another.  Or...no.  I would have that oath that you will not reveal that the conditions of the oath I wish to ask of you involve that subject.  ...blast and botheration; this is a complex web I intend to weave.  Alright.  Your level-one oath that you will not reveal, by act or omission, that the subject of who or what empowered me is not as I make it seem, unless someone else has first disclosed the truth.  ...no, that's just the same bloody oath, worded differently...  Do...give me a moment."

"Really, the primary concern I have is that in discussing the conditions of the oath, you already know of the secret.  Which was entirely my unforced error, but still.

"The secondary concern I have is that the way your oath works does not seem to include any warning component on the subject's behalf; that is, that you could break it without knowing that you were going to break it by doing what you would do.

"That just wouldn't do, because the oath would still thusly be broken.  And that's not worth bothering to extract; I don't wish to be punitive, I wish primarily to protect the secret, unless or until such time as I choose to disclose it.

"Is there something you can do to resolve that, or something I am missing that would assuage my concerns?"

"Oaths are not toys and they are not so simple as to be gotten around with cute technicalities. Intent matters also. The primary purpose of this one would be to make you know if it is broken, not to serve as a true deterrent for myself. While I believe that your concerns on this front are perhaps overstated, that is not my decision to make. What of: I will not, in writing or speech, in implication or statement, deliberately or negligently disclose any information given by one Annabel regarding Culpeper Cut today in this office excepting specific permissions granted, expiring upon Annabel's release of the oath, her death, or ten years. While I may make recommendations informed by said information, they will be bald of context or implication. With a very general prohibition there are multiple reasons you might have asked for such a thing, ranging from trauma to embarrassment to protectionism to how you were in fact trespassing on private land. I am known to make similar oaths in order to learn secrets."

"...And what did I do to give you the impression that I thought oaths such as these were -

"No, that can wait.  Business first, interpersonal concerns later.

"There's a problem with this oath; it doesn't actually protect the secret.

"Because the secret isn't really about Culpeper Cut except as that it is my 'cover', as was.

"And I'm curious why you believe my concern to be overblown, if you would."

"Then I shall append specifically not discussing your enkindling. Magic is magic, whatever its origins, and I find a great many young bearers are overly concerned with small things at first. I am, of course, not you."

"That would be acceptable.  And, indeed, you are not me - but it is not necessarily you that I am concerned about.  There are quite certainly some who treat bearers of power from different sources...differently.  And that's not something I have enough energy to face, right now.  Not with everything else I'm going to deal with."

Maeve's expression softens a bit. "We don't expect the deliverance of the world of our newest. Even if they so often expect it of themselves. To us, your job is simply to learn, now."

"I don't really imagine that I'll be saving the world.  Just having to defend myself from it, when it decides it doesn't like the cut of my jib."

She sighs.  "But that's not really what we're here to talk about.  ...If you'd be willing to swear that oath?"

"Mm." She writes out a short contract on yellowed paper fetched from a drawer, with an old-fashioned quill scratching and echoing in the odd office.

Maeve shall not, in writing or speech, in implication or statement, deliberately or negligently disclose any information given by one Annabel regarding Culpeper Cut today in Maeve's office, nor the knowledge or suspicion of Annabel's method of enkindling, excepting specific permissions granted from Annabel, expiring upon Annabel's release of the oath, Annabel's death, or ten years.

Annabel shall have no obligations.

She turns the paper around. "Read carefully, then we both touch it and I intone the promise."

She does so read, and does so touch --

-- and they say "Whenever you're ready, then."